


Life Lessons

by kathkin



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: (one chapter only see author's note for details), Aftermath of Violence, Gen, may contain traces of philosophy, mentions of child death, no more shippy than canon, probably scientific inaccuracies, though does contain 'gasps' hand-holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-17 13:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4669040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathkin/pseuds/kathkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"You’ve just taken your first step into a wider universe.” / “I have?”</i> Five lessons the Doctor taught Jamie about life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Hizzhni

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Some of them are good and some of them are bad, and most of them are very complicated, and they might look or act a bit strange to you, but deep down you’re far more alike than different._

“And come to think of it, where _did_ I put my list,” said the Doctor, and began scrabbling through his pockets, passing odds and ends to Jamie to hold until his hands were quite full. “Ah, here we are!” he said, and, leaving Jamie clutching his bits and pieces to his chest, began to read, “transistors – mm-hmm – circuit board – flurocity coils –”

“What-city?” muttered Jamie, juggling a tennis ball and a magnifying glass.

“Well, they’re – oh, it would take too long to explain,” said the Doctor. He folded the list and tucked it into his top pocket, patting it for safe-keeping. His eye fell on Jamie’s laden hands. “Oh, good gracious.” He began taking his bits back, putting them carefully into the right pockets.

“Oh, aye. Best not,” said Jamie as his hands emptied. “I still dinnae understand what’s gone wrong with the TARDIS.”

“The metrical relativity circuits,” said the Doctor. He’d said that so many times now that Jamie could recite the words, but he didn’t have the slightest idea what it meant. “You see, units of measurement are relative –”

“Aye, see,” said Jamie, “every time you start of sayin’ something’s _relative_ , that’s how I know I’m nae goin’ to follow it.”

“It’s really perfectly simple,” said the Doctor hotly. “Relative just means – ah, here we are.” They rounded a corner into a street of shut-up shops.

“It all looks closed,” Jamie said, peering doubtfully down the street. Was it night-time? He couldn’t tell. There were stars overhead, but that wasn’t the night sky, just the view through the vast glass dome that covered the place. This was a space-port, which he gathered was something like a trading post out among the stars. Built on a desolate wee planet only because it was a stopping-off point between two nicer planets.

“There’s always somewhere open selling parts, even at this hour,” said the Doctor. He finished fussing with his pockets and strutted down the road. “Do come on.”

Sure enough, not far down the road was a lit-up shop. The writing all up and down the window looked, to Jamie’s eyes, to be half a dozen or more different languages. He could pick out words made up of squares and other ones all made of spirals. “Is this it?” he said.

“Hmm, you see?” The Doctor pointed up at a sigil above the window, a circle with a complex web of straights lines inside it. “Universal symbol for a parts shop,” he said as if imparting a great secret. “We’ll get what we want here. You’ll see.”

He sauntered up the steps, Jamie at his heels. The door slid open for them, and they stepped into the brightly-lit interior. It was packed with obscure odds and ends of all shapes and colours, like a dragon’s cave, and –

Behind the counter, turning to face them, was a monster. It had a wedge-shaped head and vast, watery eyes – no mouth at all that Jamie could see – fingers like big leathery spiders stretched out across the glass counter-top.

Every part of Jamie tensed, priming for a fight. His heart leapt. He reached for his dirk, but before he could do more than brush it with his fingers, the Doctor took him by the shoulders and bundled him back towards the door. “Ever so sorry,” he called over his shoulder as Jamie let out a wordless protest.

“Hey – get off,” he said as he stumbled backwards down the steps. The Doctor released him, and he reached again for his dirk, only to have his hand slapped away. “What’re you _doin’_? That thing in there –”

“That _thing_ ,” the Doctor was still holding his arm, keeping his hand from his knife, “is called a Hizzhni. There’s an awful lot of them in this part of the galaxy – we’re only a few systems away from their home planet.”

“What’re we goin’ to do about it?” Jamie gabbled.

“Do?” The Doctor blinked at him. “We’re going to buy the parts we need.”

“But –”

“But what?”

The Doctor seemed truly confounded, and more than a little hurt. Jamie couldn’t understand it. Since when did they sit by and let nasty-looking beasties like _that_ take over space ports? “But it’s horrible-looking.”

“Oh, really, now,” said the Doctor. “Imagine how strange you must look to her, you big hairless monkey, you.”

Jamie gaped, glancing down at his own body. “That’s no’ very nice.”

“No, it is not,” said the Doctor. “We don’t insult the way other species look, do we, now?”

“Aye, but –” The full force of what the Doctor has said trickled through him. “Och, you’re not tellin’ me that thing’s a _woman_?”

“She’s a person, Jamie,” said the Doctor. “Just a bit different-looking from what you’re used to. That’s all.” Jamie stared at him. “The Hizzhni are very pleasant people, for the most part. Thriving merchant population. Wonderful architects. They might have designed some of the buildings here, if you’d like to see.” He released Jamie’s arm. “Eh?”

Jamie gritted his teeth, and shook his head.

“Oh, look,” said the Doctor. “I know that your experiences with aliens so far haven’t been especially positive, but you must understand, most intelligent species in the universe are just people. Some of them are good and some of them are bad, and most of them are very complicated, and they might look or act a bit strange to you, but deep down you’re far more alike than different. Hmm?”

Jamie wavered, torn between trust for the Doctor and his natural revulsion. He thought of the thing’s big, wet eyes staring at him, and took a step further away from the shop.

The Doctor’s mouth pinched into a line. “Well,” he said, “if you’re going to be like that, perhaps it’s best you wait outside in case Ben and Polly come looking for us.”

“Aye,” said Jamie, folding his arms. “I’ll do that.” He turned to face the street, putting his back between himself and the shop. He heard the Doctor’s feet pattering up the steps, the swish of the door, and muffled voices.

He stood, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. He checked his dirk and found it secure. He took a deep, deep, breath, steeling himself, and followed the Doctor into the shop.

Blinking in the sudden light, he stood on the threshold. The Doctor was standing by the counter, reading his list to the alien. The alien was nodding its big head slowly and tapping the items into a thing like a wee typewriter. “– eighteen millimetre t-emitters,” he was saying, “and – oh, hallo, Jamie.”

They both looked a touch startled to see him back. “Hullo.” He raised a hand awkwardly.

The Doctor beckoned him up to the counter. “This is Jamie,” he said, “good friend of mine – Jamie, this is Zadra.”

“Good evening,” said the alien. She had a pleasant, warbling voice, like deep-toned birdsong, not at all what Jamie expected to come out of such a strange-looking face. Her tiny mouth, full of pointy teeth, vanished again as she closed it. He found himself wondering if she thought it was strange to be able to see his mouth all the time.

“Nice to meet you,” said Jamie. The alien nodded her slow head and went back to tapping her keyboard.

As the pair of them talked back and forth about parts and acceptable substitutes and pricing, Jamie let his eyes drift over the back wall, over the racks of more valuable merchandise. There was a thing dangling from the ceiling, a sort of mobile made of sea shells. Lined up along a shelf was a row of frames holding moving pictures. He peered a little closer and saw smaller wedge-headed aliens, wee ones holding funny looking toys. They were her children – or her grandchildren, he supposed. He couldn’t say how old she was. He wasn’t even sure how the Doctor could tell she _was_ a she.

The Doctor ambled around the shop, collecting the things he needed and bringing them back to the counter for Zadra to box up nicely. He paid with a jumbled selection of coins and passed the box to Jamie to carry back to the TARDIS. “Don’t shake it,” he said as they climbed down the steps.

“I’ll try not to,” said Jamie.

The Doctor was folding his list back into his top pocket. “You were very quiet in there.”

“Aye, I suppose,” Jamie said. “It was. Strange.”

“It’ll take some getting used to.” The Doctor patted Jamie’s shoulder. “Well done. You’ve just taken your first step into a wider universe.”

“I have?”

“You have,” said the Doctor. “And next time, ask questions _first_. Stab later.”

Jamie’s face heated. “I wasnae really goin’ to stab her.”

“Of course you weren’t,” said the Doctor in blandest tones. “Hmm,” he hummed thoughtfully, “you know, by the time we get those parts fitted, there’ll probably be somewhere open for breakfast.”


	2. The Singing Stones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I never talk nonsense. I occasionally speak gibberish. I’ve been known to spout mumbo-jumbo. But I _never_ talk nonsense.”_

The slope was steeper and the sand looser than it had looked from above. Jamie skittered down into the gully, coming to rest ankle-deep in a pile of brightly coloured stones. He was still getting his balance and his breath back when the Doctor pattered down behind him. “Careful!”

“Eh?” The Doctor indicated the pebbles. Jamie sprang back, taking a few steps back up the slope. He stood there, shuffling his feet to stay in one spot, and said, “are they dangerous?”

“Hmm?” The Doctor stooped to inspect the pebbles. “Oh, no, no. I was just worried you might have hurt them.”

“ _Hurt_ them?” Jamie edged his way around the pile to a patch of bare, flat-ish ground. The gully ran on in both directions still it twisted out of sight. The sides were steep and dusty, the sand grey in the murky light.

The Doctor picked up one of the stones, a red-ish stone, and dusted it off. “No harm done, I think.”

“What’d you mean, hurt them?” said Jamie. “They’re rocks.”

“Some rocks do have feelings, you know.” The Doctor stood up, sand all over the knees of his trousers.

Jamie stared at him. It occurred to him that the Doctor might finally have lost his mind. “Y’what?” he managed.

“It’s alive,” said the Doctor, nodding at the little red stone in his hands as if this was self-evident.

“It’s a _rock_ ,” said Jamie in exasperation.

“Yes, it is,” the Doctor agreed, “though it would be more accurate, I think, to describe it as a primitive silicon-based photosynthetic crystalline life-form.”

Jamie blinked. “Well, _now_ you’re just talking nonsense.”

“I am not!” The Doctor was suddenly a picture of indignance. “I never talk nonsense. I occasionally speak gibberish. I’ve been known to spout mumbo-jumbo. But I _never_ talk nonsense.”

Jamie couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, aye. It’s still a rock.”

“A very clever rock,” the Doctor nodded.

Jamie squinted at the rock. It didn’t look terribly clever to him. It looked like any other rock you’d pick up off the dusty ground, albeit a bit more colourful than most. “It’s a nice rock?”

“Oh, here.” The Doctor took Jamie’s wrist, forced his hand out, and pressed the rock into his hand.

Jamie had a retort all ready, but it died on his lips. The rock was – lighter than he expected, for one thing. Light like pumice, and speckled with pin-prick holes. For another thing – “It’s warm,” he said dumbly. It oughtn’t be warm. The sun wasn’t up yet. There was still a chill in the air, and the sand on the ground was cold.

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “It’s alive.”

But it was _stone_. It defied all logic. But here he was, holding it and feeling the warmth coming from within it. “Can it – does it know we’re here?”

“Hmm.” The Doctor rubbed his ear. “I don’t think it really _knows_ much of anything. Best to think of it more like a plant than an animal.” Jamie nodded slowly. 

“How does it –” Jamie turned the pebble over and over in his hand, looking at the glimmers of crystal inside. He wasn’t sure how to articulate the question he wanted to ask – how does it _do_ any of the things that life does? – but the Doctor seemed to read his mind, as he did sometimes.

“Ah, you see – in the wet season, all this,” the Doctor gestured up and down the gully, “is a river. The stones float –”

“Like pumice?”

“Yes, very like pumice,” the Doctor agreed. “The river picks them up and carries them down-stream. Come the dry season, they’ll come to rest in a new patch of river bed. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“Aye, I suppose.” Jamie was still coming to grips with the basic concept. It was a rock. It looked and felt like rock. “But how –”

“Look sharp.” The Doctor pointed upwards. “Sunrise.”

“Eh?” Jamie looked, and saw pinkish sunlight cresting over the top of the gully. The sun came up awful quick on this planet, the Doctor had told him. It would be daylight in moments.

The light hit the stone in his hand first, and to his astonishment it began to hum, vibrating against his palm. It began to hum, and then it began to make a noise, a high, clear note, over and over. A second later he felt the ground beneath him as quiver as all the stones up and down the gully did the same. They hummed, and began to make high-pitched noises.

After a few seconds of shrill cacophony, they reached a sort of equilibrium, and – they were _singing_. Singing like twittering birds. Each pebble was humming away with its own note, and altogether they made a sort of song. “They’re singin’,” he said.

“Yes!” The Doctor tapped his lips thoughtfully. “Hmm. ‘Resonating’ might be a more appropriate word.”

“Eh?”

“Never mind,” the Doctor said. “Now, didn’t I tell you it was worth having a look around?”

“Aye,” said Jamie. The bafflement was beginning to wear off. A smile was slowly creeping across his face. Living rocks. _Singing_ rocks. Of all the wonders. “You were right.”

“I usually am.” The Doctor beamed to himself.

“Can I keep it?” Jamie blurted out.

“Ah,” said the Doctor. “Though I’m sure it would make a lovely pet rock, they need a lot of sunlight, and I’m afraid natural light is in rather short supply in the TARDIS.”

“Oh, well,” Jamie said with a sigh. He replaced the rock, trying his best to get it back where it came from. Straightening up, he dusted off his hands and said, “we’d best see where Polly and Ben have got to.”


	3. Wiggly Beasties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The Doctor had got about as far in his explanation as ‘it really doesn’t have anything to do with Germany, you see’ before he’d given up and declared that they were going to adopt a ‘hands-on approach’._

Jamie peered down the microscope, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing. He took his eye away from the lens, and looked at the slide, a plain square of glass with a few drops of liquid on it. He looked again, and saw wiggly beasties swimming about, tiny tentacles and blobby things like eyes. It was like looking into another world.

“There, you see?” said the Doctor. “Germs.”

He’d got about as far in his explanation as ‘it really doesn’t have anything to do with Germany, you see’ before he’d given up and declared that they were going to adopt a ‘hands-on approach’.

Jamie looked at the slide again. Part of him was sure it must be a trick – but it was quite simple, really. Like a telescope, the Doctor said, but for looking at things that were very small rather than very far away. He put his eye to the lens, and said, “what _are_ they? Wee animals?”

“Not quite,” said the Doctor. “They’re, ah, a quite separate order of life – not an animal or a plant, you see. But yes, you could think of them as tiny animals.”

“And that’s why people get sick?” said Jamie slowly. “Cause they’re bein’ attacked by wee beasties?”

“Ye-es,” said the Doctor, “yes, that would be one way to put it.”

Jamie considered. “That doesnae sound right,” he said. Were it not for the wiggly things at the other end of the microscope he’d have said the Doctor was making it up.

“Well, there’s a little more to it than that.”

“Oh, aye.” There always was. Everything seemed to be more complicated than the Doctor had time to explain to him.

“You see,” said the Doctor, “there’s far more to bacteria –”

“Eh?”

“Oh yes, that’s the proper word – to bacteria than making people sick. They do all sorts of things. You find them living more or less everywhere.”

“How’d you mean, everywhere?”

“Oh, you know,” said the Doctor. “Under the sea, inside rocks, occasionally in space. And on more or less any surface that isn’t sterilised.”

Jamie looked at the bench, and slowly lifted his hands off it. “Everywhere?”

“Everywhere,” said the Doctor gravely.

“And they’re,” Jamie was struggling to wrap his head around the enormity of it. “Dangerous?”

“Some of them,” the Doctor. “They’re like any other form of life. Some of them are very dangerous indeed, some of them are harmless, some of them are actually good for you.”

“How are they _good_ for me?” Jamie took another peek. He couldn’t see how anything that tiny could do any good. But then again, he couldn’t imagine how they could kill people, either.

“Well,” said the Doctor, “you have about three or four pounds of them living inside you right now.”

Jamie stared at him. “You’re jokin’.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Where?”

“In your gut,” said the Doctor. “Not to mention a surprising amount on your skin,” he added contemplatively.

Jamie looked at his hands. He cast a horrified glance down at his stomach. “What are they _doin’_ in there?” he managed.

“Keeping your intestines running,” said the Doctor, as if this was perfectly natural. Which, Jamie supposed, it might well be. “Symbiosis,” the Doctor added.

“Symbi-what now?”

“Symbiosis,” the Doctor repeated. “Co-existence. You need them, they need you.”

Jamie thought of the tiny beasties on the slide, and imagined them all wiggling around inside him. His stomach clenched. “I think I’m goin’ tae be sick.”

“Now, now,” said the Doctor. “Don’t be like that. It’s sort of uplifting, when you think about it.”

“Eh?”

“Your body is a fully-fledged eco system,” said the Doctor. “Like a forest, or, or an ocean. Millions of tiny creatures are relying on you.” He patted Jamie’s stomach. “Best not let them down.”

Jamie stared at him. His gaze shifted to a spot above the microscope as he considered. “Nope,” he said at length. “I still dinnae like it.”

The Doctor propped himself against the bench. “Well, I’m terribly sorry, but it really doesn’t make any difference whether or not you like it.” Jamie made an unhappy sound. The Doctor leaned in, and as if imparting a secret said, “would you like to look at some other things through the microscope?”

Honestly, the Doctor had the strangest idea of fun – but then again. “What sort of things?” he said dubiously.

“Well, if you don’t mind sparing a little blood –”

“Oh, aye,” said Jamie. “I’ve got lots of _that_.”

A few minutes later, he stood staring down the microscope, a spray-on bandage on his finger, marvelling. “It’s all wee circles.”

“Blood cells,” the Doctor explained, and Jamie nodded like he knew what that meant. “Not what you expected?”

“I didn’t know _what_ to expect.” Jamie pushed the microscope towards the Doctor. “Make somethin’ else big.”

“Good gracious,” said the Doctor, laughing as he took the microscope. “We shall run out of slides at this rate.”


	4. Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Life has a way of bouncing back.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tagged warnings apply to this chapter.

The Doctor peered at the dials on the console, and sucked in his breath through his teeth. “What’s the matter?” said Polly.

“Come and look at this.” They duly huddled around him. Ben swore loudly. “Language,” the Doctor chastised. “But yes. I couldn’t have put it better.” He scratched his ear thoughtfully.

“Well?” said Ben.

“Well what?” the Doctor blinked.

“Aren’t you goin’ to get us out of here?” said Ben. It was clear from the look on the Doctor’s face that he’d had no intention of doing any such thing. “Oh, come on! It ain’t safe.”

“Ben’s right,” Polly chimed in. “Get us away from here, Doctor.”

“Oh, piffle,” said the Doctor. “We’re perfectly safe inside the TARDIS.” He clapped his hands together decisively. “And I fancy a walk about.” That got him a chorus of disapproval. “You don’t have to join me if you don’t want to,” he added, sheepishly indignant. “How about you, Jamie?”

“Eh?” Truth be told, Jamie didn’t know what the fuss was about. Yes, the needle on one of the dials was well into the red quarter of its wee circle, and he knew enough to know that that meant _danger_ , but wasn’t everywhere they landed dangerous? “Oh, aye. I’d like to stretch me legs.”

“See?” said the Doctor to Ben and Polly. “ _Jamie’s_ being reasonable.”

“Only because he don’t know what he’s getting in to,” Ben grumbled.

Jamie opened his mouth to ask just what Ben meant by that, but the Doctor said, “ah, Jamie. Third cupboard from the right, through there. There’s a blue box. Would you mind awfully?”

“Aye, alright.” When he came back from scrabbling through the Doctor’s ramshackle cupboards, they were still going at it.

“You can’t _possibly_ go out there,” Polly was saying. 

“I can, and I shall,” said the Doctor.

“Yeah, well, don’t blame us when you’re –”

“Jamie,” said the Doctor, talking clean over Ben. “Yes, that’s the one.” He took the box and opened it up, shaking translucent capsules into the palm of his hand. “Swallow one of these. Oh, and get yourself something warm to wear while you’re at it. It’ll be chilly.”

 _Chilly_ was a bit of an understatement. It was bitingly cold, so cold that it was like stepping into wall of icy water. His knees began to shake almost at once. He hunched into his coat, his eyes watering.

It was cold, and an icy wind whistled overhead – and the _view_ – he’d seen a sliver of it on the scanner, but that hadn’t prepared him for the panorama. He’d seen ruined buildings and assumed they couldn’t go on that far; that there’d be some tumble-down houses and then the rest of the town, or countryside. But there was nothing but broken rubble piled like hills, nothing but broken stone and glass and metal as far as he could see.

He couldn’t take it all in. He wasn’t used to seeing cities on this scale at all; certainly he wasn’t used to seeing them flattened. Flattened, as surely as if someone had dropped a great rock on it. In the distance he could see skeletons of tall buildings, but close by there was just rubble. Twin suns glinted overhead, one orange, hanging low on the horizon, the other high and blue.

“I don’t understand,” he said. He wiped his eyes on the back of a gloved hand. “What did this?”

“It’s, ah, quite complicated.” The Doctor pocketed the TARDIS key and brought out a wind-up alarm clock, which he wound. “Best not stay out too long.”

“What’d you mean, complicated?” said Jamie. “Why’s it so dangerous?” He couldn’t see any danger. He couldn’t see anything at all.

“It’s complicated, and I shall explain while we walk.” The Doctor tucked his alarm clock into a pocket and began to pick his way across the rubbly ground, beckoning Jamie to follow him. “In the meantime, though, stay close to me, and don’t touch anything. Understood?”

“Aye,” said Jamie numbly.

They picked and scraped their way around the mounds of rubble that had once been buildings, and as they walked the Doctor explain, haltingly, what had happened. It was difficult, for it was quickly clear to Jamie that the science involved was beyond him. But he thought he could grasp the basics, even if perhaps he didn’t want to.

“I suppose,” the Doctor mulled, “a nuclear bomb is to a canon what a – a horse and cart is to a spaceship. Do you follow?”

“I think so.” Jamie looked up at the clear sky, eyes watering, and tried to imagine it. A single bomb, like a canon shell, falling out of the sky, with enough power in it to level a city. It didn’t sound like something men ought to be able to do. A whole city wiped out in a day – it sounded like something out of scripture. It sounded like Sodom and Gomorrah. “Will it happen again?”

“No, no,” said the Doctor in a tone that was surely meant to be reassuring. “The fighting’s all over now.” He looked up at the scraps of cloud above them. “It’s all over, now.”

“Then what’s the danger?” Jamie asked.

“That’s, ah, the tricky part,” said the Doctor. They rounded a corner, and stopped, finding themselves on the brink of a hill. Stretched out before them was acre upon acre of ruined city. From above, Jamie realised, you could make out the pattern of the streets. Here and there shells of buildings were still standing. He could see two towering structures – skyscrapers, that was the word for them, aye – in the distance, their windows empty and cold. “Quite a view,” said the Doctor.

“It’s horrible.” Jamie hugged himself tighter. The Doctor was – not enjoying himself, exactly, but clearly indulging his morbid fascination. Jamie couldn’t leave him to his own devices, not like this.

“You see,” said the Doctor, “the – forces – used in nuclear weapons, they leave a kind of – taint. In the air.”

“Like a poison?” Jamie’d heard of weapons that could fill the air with poisons that would choke men where they stood.

“Not exactly a poison, no,” said the Doctor, ruminating. “More like a sort of – heat. Radiation.”

“I dinnae follow,” said Jamie.

“It’s difficult to explain.” The Doctor thought a moment, chewing on his lower lip. He nudged Jamie, urging him on to the rough path down the hill. “Sunlight,” he said after a few long moments thought.

“Eh?” said Jamie, struggling to find his footing.

“Sunlight is a form of radiation.”

“But it’s nae dangerous.”

“It can be, if you get too much of it,” said the Doctor.

“So you’re saying,” said Jamie, “if we stay out here too long, we’ll get – sunburnt?”

“In a sense,” said the Doctor. “It’d burn you from the inside out.”

Jamie glanced down at his chest and tried not to imagine it. “But it’s safe?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Doctor. “The medicine you took, that’ll keep you quite safe for oh, four or five hours.” He tapped his upper pocket, where he’d put his alarm clock. “We’ll go back when this starts ringing. Don’t touch anything. And oh,” he ambled back a few steps, and said to Jamie, “if it starts to rain, run straight back to the TARDIS. Understood?”

“Aye,” said Jamie, staring up at the looming skyscrapers. “I understand.”

But he wasn’t at all sure he did. The hollow skyscrapers loomed nearer and nearer as they worked their way along the remains of a road. Here and there, amidst the rubble, were crystal-clear patches of frozen water. Jamie remembered that the Doctor had said about rain and walked around them.

The Doctor had taken him to some strange places, but this was the first that was truly ugly. Hideously so, like something that had been left to rot until it stank. Icy-cold and silent as a tomb. It was hard to believe people had ever lived here. This had once been a city larger, he thought, than any that had existed in his own century, and it had been reduced to this in a day. It was all he could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

They passed under the shell of one of the buildings, like a massive, blockish arch. It struck Jamie, as he peered up at the shadowy roof, what it was that so unnerved him about this place. There ought to be _something_ living here, even if the people were all gone. Ruins should have birds nesting in them and plants growing on them – they should go back to the earth, not stand out in the open, forever.

Beyond the tower he stopped and stood hunched in his coat, staring up at its gaunt, glassless windows. The Doctor stomped up beside him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Jamie?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m going on a little further. Would you rather wait here?”

“Oh. Aye. I’m a wee bit tired.” He wasn’t, really, but this was giving him the creeps like nothing else.

The Doctor ambled out of sight, down a sort of gully between buildings that might once have been an alleyway. Alone, Jamie sat down on a broken wall, feeling perfectly dismal.

He couldn’t say how long he sat there, staring up at the unnaturally blue sky, before he heard the Doctor calling him. “Jamie?” he called, from down amidst the ruins. “Come and look at this.”

Steeling himself, Jamie got up, brushing the dust from his kilt. He followed the Doctor’s voice down a slope to a place where a few scraps of wall were still standing. “Where’re you?”

“Over here,” called the Doctor from somewhere up ahead, sounding unnervingly cheerful, given where they were. Jamie went, haltingly, after him. He passed by an upright section of wall, and glanced at it momentarily. He stepped back a few paces, and took a longer look, his stomach sickly twisting.

On the wall were things like – like shadows, black against the off-white surface. Two shapes about his height and one the size of a child. He could make out heads, limbs, even the outline of clothing. But they weren’t shadows. They were something like soot. He reached out a hand to see if the dust would come away, but couldn’t bring himself to touch. He stood, staring, his gorge rising, unable to tear his eyes away.

“Jamie?” he heard the Doctor say, faint and worried. There were footsteps and he felt more than heard the Doctor come to stand beside him. “Ah.”

“Is that.” Jamie swallowed and tried again. “Is that what it looks like?”

“I’m afraid so. Mankind really never does stop coming up with creative new ways to kill each other,” the Doctor said, the bitterness in his voice almost palpable.

There were tears welling up in his eyes, or maybe that was just the wind. It took him a few moments to muster any words. “Why did you bring me out here?”

“Jamie, I –” The Doctor tried to rest a comforting hand on his shoulder. Jamie shrugged him off.

“I dinnae – why did they do this?”

“I don’t know,” said the Doctor. “People do dreadful things, in wars.”

Jamie sucked in a breath, and shook his head. “This isnae war. I’ve seen war. This is just – just killin’.”

“Jamie –” Whatever the Doctor’d been going to say, he thought better off. He fell silent. The wind whistled around them.

It was just as well he was no good at numbers. He didn’t want to imagine how many people might live in a city this size. He wondered if they’d had any warning. Oh God, but there had been _children_.

“Jamie,” said the Doctor again, softly. He rested a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “Come away. I want to show you something.”

The fight was gone from him. Jamie let the Doctor guide him away, guide him beyond another wall to a more sheltered dip in the ground, where the wind wasn’t quite so biting. “Have a look at this,” he said, crouching on the rocky ground. 

Jamie crouched beside him, and watched as he lifted a stone. “Hey, you said not to touch anything.”

“I do know what I’m doing,” said the Doctor. He turned the rock over, and showed Jamie the other side.

It was almost invisible against the creamy-grey surface. Jamie was about to ask the Doctor what he was looking at – when he saw it. Growing across the surface of the rock was a layer of clumpy grey lichen, or something like lichen – the first living thing he’d seen, beside the Doctor, since leaving the TARDIS. “Oh.”

“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” said the Doctor, turning the lichen-covered rock about in his hands. “Life has a way of bouncing back.”

“It’s nae much,” said Jamie.

“It’s something,” said the Doctor. “And it’ll grow.” He ran his gloved thumb over the lichen. “I think if we were to come back in a century or two, this place would be recovering.”

“Do you reckon?” Jamie couldn’t quite believe it.

“There are all sorts of plants that thrive on radiation, you know,” said the Doctor. “And some of those that can’t will adapt. No, given enough time even somewhere as ghastly as this will be green again.” He replaced the rock, turning it face-down upon the dust.

From his coat pocket, there came a faint ringing. “Ah.” The Doctor pulled out his alarm clock and hastily silenced it. “That’s our cue to leave, I think.” He climbed to his feet and dusted himself down. “You are alright, aren’t you?” he said, sounding so concerned that Jamie couldn’t bring himself to say no.

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

“I do hope it’s been,” the Doctor seemed to struggle for the right words, “educational.”

Jamie looked at the rock upon the ground, and said, “aye. I think so.”


	5. Dogs and Fishes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“This, Jamie, is a trilobite. Native to earth. Sweet, isn’t it?”_

Sometimes, working out where they’d landed was a puzzle even for the Doctor. The gravity, he said, was earth normal, the air marginally denser. No clues to be found there, and no landmarks to speak of. It was flat and grey. Not quite a beach, though Jamie could see the sea foaming not far off. Just an expanse of rock, speckled here and there with dips and cracks and tidal pools. To Jamie’s eyes, it was dull as ditch water, but the Doctor had a way of amusing himself more or less anywhere.

Jamie knelt beside one of the pools, peering at the slimy contents, feigning interest. “Now, I’m not sure what that is,” the Doctor pointed at a round shellfish. “But this –” He reached in, quick as a flash, and grabbed a handful of something grey-black and wriggling. “Aha!” He cupped his hands around his prize, beaming. “I know where we are.”

“Where are we?” Jamie looked at the little creature writhing in the Doctor’s palms. It looked like a fat woodlouse. Bigger than any woodlouse had a right to be, as far as he was concerned.

“We’re on earth,” said the Doctor as if it were perfectly simple.

Jamie looked about himself, at the bare rocks and the distant frothing sea and the hazy sky. “How’d you figure?”

“This, Jamie,” the Doctor held out his giant woodlouse. “Is a trilobite. Native to earth. Sweet, isn’t it?”

“Oh, aye,” said Jamie. “Aye, it’s lovely.”

“Yes, our little friend here and his ilk are one of the most common species on the planet at present,” said the Doctor, still smiling to himself. “Splendid.”

“If you say so,” said Jamie. “I still dinnae see how this can be earth, though. Where are we?”

“ _When_ , my boy,” corrected the Doctor. “We’re about, oh,” he inspected the trilobite, “five hundred and twenty-five million years before your time, I’d say.”

Jamie’s brain momentarily halted. Very large numbers often had the effect on him. “How many’s a million again?” he mustered.

“Hmm? Oh, a thousand thousands,” said the Doctor absently.

Jamie mouthed numbers to himself as he tried to work out how many centuries that would come to. A thousand thousands times by a hundred, that made a hundred-thousand thousands – was that right? He supposed it must be. So, five hundred thousand-thousands. But how many centuries were in a million, anyway? And what was he to do with that twenty-five?

The Doctor was still babbling about trilobites, but Jamie was too wrapped up in his vain calculations to pay attention and so was taken quite off-guard when the Doctor took his hand and dropped the trilobite into it with a cheery, “have a look, now.”

“Eurgh!” he exclaimed. It was wet and grimy and its wee legs were pointed. He held it out at arm’s length, afraid to drop it lest it landed on his feet. “What is it with you and creepy-crawlies?”

“Creepy is relative, you know,” said the Doctor with a knowing smirk.

“You could at least _warn_ me,” Jamie moaned.

“Where would the fun in that be?” The Doctor chuckled to himself. “Oh, well. Best put this little fellow back.” He lifted the trilobite out of Jamie’s hand and set it carefully back in the pool, where it scurried away to join its friends. “I shouldn’t think it’s ready to be out in the air yet.”

“You make it sound like it’s cookin’,” Jamie mused.

“In a sense it is,” said the Doctor. “It might not look it from here, but we’re sitting in the middle of a veritable explosion of life.” He stared down into the rock pool, delighted. “Hmm. In a few million years, these little fellows’ descendants might be walking on land.”

“What’re you talking about?” said Jamie.

“We’re too early for land animals, unfortunately,” the Doctor went on, as if Jamie hadn’t spoken. 

“Eh?”

“If only we’d landed somewhere a little warmer,” said the Doctor. “We might have been able to get a proper look in the sea.” The Doctor glanced up at Jamie and at last registered his confusion. “Oh, goodness me. I suppose we ought to start with the basics.”

Jamie wavered between an assortment of questions. He plumped for, “what do you mean, no land animals?”

“Nor plants, either,” said the Doctor. “The only life on earth in this period is in the sea.”

“How did it get out of the sea?”

The Doctor considered the question, a thoughtful yet mildly befuddled look upon his face, as if it had never occurred to him he might have to explain this to someone. With a sinking feeling, Jamie wondered if he’d asked a very stupid question. “I think,” said the Doctor at length. “That that’s a very long story, and one best saved for somewhere nice and warm.” He reached into the rock pool to stir a trilobite into movement.

Jamie rolled his eyes and stood. He adjusted his breathing mask while the Doctor’s attention was elsewhere. He didn’t really understand why he had to wear it – something about the air being too heavy, but the Doctor wasn’t wearing one and he seemed fine – and it bothered him. It was perfectly comfortable, the rubbery substance it was made from soft against his skin, the air tasteless, but he could see it every time he glanced down and when he toyed with it the Doctor scolded him.

He rubbed his hands together against the cold. Turning to scan the horizon for Ben and Polly – who were generally more sensible company and the Doctor, if less interesting – he froze. 

“Hey, Doctor,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“No land animals yet, you said?”

“Quite so.”

“None at all?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Then what’s that?” Jamie nodded down the coast.

“What’s what – oh, good gracious.” The Doctor leapt to his feet, the rock pool forgotten. “Would you look at that?”

Not far off, floating a little way above the ground, was a silver dome the size of a small building. Jamie could see two rows of windows and a long spindly staircase leading down to the ground. Dotted around it were people in groups of two or three, wearing breathing masks very like his, pottering about and peering into rock pools.

“We’ve got company,” said the Doctor, delighted grin upon his face.

Jamie glanced from the silver dome to the Doctor’s cheerful face. “Who are they?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“How’d they get here?”

“Same way we did, I imagine.”

Jamie squinted at the dome. “You don’t meant to tell me that thing’s a TARDIS?” he said, incredulous. He’d had a notion the TARDIS was unique. Certainly he couldn’t picture another one.

“Nooo,” said the Doctor, drawing out the word. “No, not exactly. Probably something far more primitive. But the same basic principle, I should think. Oh yes, that’ll be some sort of time machine. Hm.” He squinted. “Thirty-third or thirty-fourth century, I’d say.” He clapped his hands together. “Shall we go and say hello?”

The time machine was operated by _Bluebird Inc.: Time Travelling Tours from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous!_ As they had some kind of exclusive right to this part of the Cambrian, the nice lady at the bottom of the staircase didn’t have any trouble believing that the Doctor and Jamie were clients whose names had somehow fallen off the register.

And that was how they found themselves sitting in front of a panoramic view of primordial earth, surrounded by tourists from the thirty-second century (‘Oh, I was close, wasn’t I?’) eating crumpets and jam.

Jamie was quite content to enjoy his crumpets – which tasted all the better for being the only ones in the universe – and let the Doctor babble away about whatever took his fancy, but the peace didn’t last long.

“Quite the last place you’d expect to find a tea shop, isn’t it?” mused the Doctor, waving his crumpet around.

“Mmm,” mumbled Jamie. “No’ really a shop. We’re no’ payin’.”

“It’s complimentary,” said the Doctor.

“Eh?”

“Included in the price of the tour.”

“But we didn’t pay for the –”

“Shh!” the Doctor hissed, waving a hand for him to be quiet, at least until the waitress had tinkled by. She was wearing the strangest array of tiny mirrors. Jamie assumed that was what fancy ladies were wearing in the thirty-second century, and was quite taken with it.

A screen set into the table swished between images and blocks of text. Jamie watched it absently till his attention was pricked by a picture of a rock bearing the imprint of a big woodlouse. “Oh, look,” he said, poking at the screen. “It’s one of your wee friends.”

“Hmm?” said the Doctor. “Oh, yes. A trilobite. Though that one isn’t quite so wee.” He motioned with his hands, one of them still bearing a jammy crumpet, how big it was. 

Jamie cringed. “Yuch.”

“Now, now.” The Doctor bit into his crumpet. “Oh, that reminds me,” he said around his mouthful. “I owe you a science lesson, don’t I?”

“About the land animals?” Jamie said. 

“Mm-hmm,” said the Doctor.

“Och, no,” said Jamie. “D’you have to?”

The Doctor swallowed. “I do hope I’m not boring you.”

“It’s no’ that,” Jamie said. “It’s just you’re always explainin’ things that are too complicated for me, and it makes me head hurt.”

“Oh, balderdash,” said the Doctor. “Anyhow, it’s really quite simple.”

“Oh?” said Jamie doubtfully.

“Come to think of it, you’re almost certainly familiar with the basic principle.”

“I am?” said Jamie, who didn’t know the first thing about how land animals came out of the sea. Gasping for breath, he imagined, and very confused.

“Now, say you keep dogs –” said the Doctor.

“Aye, I used to,” said Jamie.

“Splendid. You’ll know what I’m talking about,” said the Doctor, splashing more jam upon his crumpet. “Now, say you want your next litter of puppies to be faster than the last. What do you do?”

“Pray?” Jamie shrugged.

The Doctor scowled. “Use your head, will you?”

Jamie shrugged again. He didn’t understand what this had to do with trilobites and land animals, and he had a nasty feeling that this was one of those questions where the answer was either laughably simple or nigh-impossible to guess. “I don’t know. Breed your fastest dogs?”

“Exactly!” The Doctor clapped his hands. “You breed your fastest dogs. You keep doing that and your dogs get faster. You select for, say, physical characteristics and over time you have all sorts of breeds of dog. Are you with me?”

“Aye, I think so,” said Jamie, for so far it seemed like common sense to him. “Are you goin’ somewhere with this?”

“Of course I am.” The Doctor looked mildly affronted. “You see, nature has a way of selecting animals all by itself.” He began to scrape the jam upon his plate into a pile. “Now, imagine this is a mountain.”

“Aye. Mount Jam.”

“Mount Jam, quite. So, say you have a pack of wild dogs – and somehow it gets split in two, one on either side of the mountain.” He moved breadcrumbs around, arranging them into some obscure design. “On one side of the mountain is open grassland – and on the other is – a forest. There.” He smiled at his jam-and-crumpet masterpiece. “Now, your forest dogs, if they want to avoid getting eaten by bigger dogs, the best thing for them to do is hide – and the ones that are best at hiding are the ones that have the good fortune to be striped. The others are inclined to get eaten up before they’re old enough to breed, so their traits don’t get passed on. Do you follow?” 

Jamie nodded, licking melted butter off his fingers. The Doctor frowned and tossed him a napkin, which he ignored. He liked licking his fingers, thank you very much.

“But the grassland dogs, on the other hand, they don’t have anywhere to hide, so the best thing for them to be is small and fast. Over time you have two quite different kinds of dog. There you are, you see?” He smiled as if all Jamie’s questions were answered. “Evolution by natural selection. From that same basic process, you can get all sorts of species. Are you with me?”

“I think so, aye.” Jamie took another crumpet. “I see what you mean about the dogs. I just dinnae see how you can go from a fish to a dog.”

“You’re not thinking big enough,” said the Doctor. “Remember, you’re looking at a period spanning hundreds of millions of years. With enough time on your hands – yes, you can get a dog out of a fish.” Jamie stared at him, puzzled. “From fish” said the Doctor, scraping his jam into new shapes, “you get amphibians – frogs and newts, you know – and from amphibians you get reptiles. From there you get birds and mammals both. Do you understand?”

It was beginning to make sense. He could picture that progression, in his head. After all, what was a frog, if not a funny half-fish? “I’m no’ sure.”

“Life on earth is just one very big, very strange family – if you go back far enough, you share a common ancestor with every living thing on earth. Fascinating, isn’t it?” The Doctor grinned crookedly as Jamie digested that.

“Even plants?” Jamie finished his crumpet and scrutinised his mug. He’d been in the mood for tea, but the Doctor insisted he try hot chocolate instead. It was alarmingly frothy on top, but the Doctor seemed ever so confident that he’d like it. He took a tentative sip and found it just short of too-sweet.

“Even plants,” said the Doctor. “You’d be surprised how much you have in common with plants, on a genetic level.”

“Really?” Jamie wrinkled his nose and took another sip of hot chocolate.

“Hmm,” the Doctor murmured. “You know, some of those trilobites out there could be your great-great-great-great grandparents.”

Jamie almost choked on his hot chocolate. He looked at the Doctor, appalled. He hadn’t thought the Doctor had meant it all quite so literally. “What?” he sputtered.

“You _have_ been paying attention, haven’t you?” said the Doctor. “You’re the product of exactly the same process of adaptation and evolution as every other living thing on the planet.” Jamie stared at him. “You didn’t think you were special, did you?”

“I didn’t know what to think,” Jamie said.

“Your closest relatives would be your great apes,” the Doctor went on. He stirred his hot chocolate and sucked cream off his spoon. “You know. Chimpanzees, gorillas. You used to have closer relatives, but I believe you out-evolved them.”

Jamie’s gaze strayed thoughtfully to the grey landscape beyond the window. He wondered if this was the Doctor’s idea of a joke, and, if so, when the science lesson had stopped and the fun had started. “So you’re sayin’,” he said slowly, still digesting, “I’m just an overgrown monkey?”

“Hmm,” said the Doctor. “I suppose I am.”

Jamie shook his head. “I dinnae see it.” He’d seen monkeys. They were noisy, chattering things with unnerving faces and funny little hands.

“Really?” The Doctor arched his impressive eyebrows. “I think the resemblance is quite striking.” Jamie fixed him with a glare, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Whyever not?”

“Well,” Jamie didn’t know where to begin, “I dinnae have a tail, for one thing.”

“You’ve got a tail bone, haven’t you?”

“Well, aye, but –” All at once, things clicked into focus. “Oh.”

“Oh indeed.” The Doctor helped himself to more butter.

Jamie slumped down in his chair, mortified. He didn’t know what bothered him more – the thought that some of his ancestors had been hairy monkey-people, or where exactly the Almighty was supposed to fit in to all this.

“Now, you see,” the Doctor wiped his sticky fingers and abruptly swept forward, taking Jamie’s hand and tugging it onto the table top. “Here’s the giveaway. This is the trademark of a brachiating species.” He pulled Jamie’s hand up, pressing their palms together, spreading their fingers. “Original evolved for swinging about forest canopies, and then – much, much later, you understand – adapted for manipulating tools. Oh yes, you’re quite definitely an overgrown monkey. An overgrown, hairless monkey.”

Jamie stared at him, truly appalled. The Doctor had said it all so cheerily, as if this was something to be proud of rather than – well, he didn’t know _what_ it was. It didn’t sound like it could be true, but despite himself he found he believed every word.

He must have looked as aghast as he felt, for the Doctor said, “oh, don’t fret so. It’s really nothing to be ashamed of. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“Oh, aye?” Jamie said, half-mumbling.

“You see,” the Doctor turned Jamie’s hand over and traced the lines upon his palm with his fingers as he spoke. “Sometimes a species will adapt and adapt a certain trait until they have it all but perfected – speed, say, or camouflage. Do you know what you’ve perfected?”

“What?” said Jamie.

“Adaptability.” A smile spread across the Doctor’s face. “Fascinating, isn’t it? Humans have adapted to be adaptable. That’s practically no situation nature can throw at you that you can’t survive, one way or another.” His thumb stroked across the soft part of Jamie’s hand. “And you’re living proof of that, you know.”

“How’d you mean?” Jamie was having trouble keeping track of when the Doctor meant ‘you’ as in everyone and when he meant ‘you’ as in Jamie.

“Well, look at you,” the Doctor mused. “You were born before anyone got around to inventing steam trains, and yet here you are, sitting inside a time machine.”

“Aye, so?”

“So?” The Doctor blinked. “A few months ago, say – would you have even dreamed any of this could be possible?”

“Of course not,” said Jamie.

“And yet here you are.” The Doctor ran his thumb down Jamie’s life-line. “You know, Jamie, when I took you aboard the TARDIS I really didn’t know how well you’d cope with all this.”

“Och, thanks,” Jamie said, a little hurt.

“Now, don’t be like that,” said the Doctor. “I didn’t mean it as a slight on your intelligence – it’s only that you lack any kind of frame of reference for this sort of thing. Ben and Polly are from the cusp of the space age, you know – these things aren’t so strange to them.” Jamie thought he understood what the Doctor meant, at least the gist of it. After all, once upon a time he’d struggled to get his head around the idea that the moon was a real place that you could visit – let alone that there might be other planets and other suns and moons, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of them.

The Doctor looked him in the eye, and said, “I _was_ trying to pay you a compliment,” and he said it so sincerely, with just a hint of contrition, that Jamie whole-heartedly believed him.

“Thank you,” he said, trying to put just as much feeling into his own words.

The Doctor turned Jamie’s hand about and patted it upon the back. “I do hope I didn’t go too quickly. I know this is all very new for you.”

“Actually, it’s no’ that different from what I was taught,” Jamie mused. You had the earth, and the oceans – and then all the different sorts of plants and animals, coming in stages – aye, the shape of it was familiar.

“Well –” The Doctor stopped and seemed to think very seriously. “No,” he said. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t be, would it? I never thought of it like that. Funny how these things work out,” he added around a mouthful of crumpet.

“How did it all get started, though?” said Jamie. “How did the fish get in the sea, and start turning in to other animals?”

The Doctor gave him a funny look, as if he hadn’t expected Jamie to ask. “Now, that,” he said, “is a much longer question, and one best saved for another day.”

“Oh,” said Jamie. He turned his eyes again to the mass of grey rocks. The sea, he thought, looked a touch closer, but otherwise nothing had changed. “You know something?”

“Hmm?”

“I still think this place is dull as ditch water.”

The Doctor laughed to himself. “Not one for the laymen, I suppose,” he said. “One of these days I shall take you to see dinosaurs.”

“Oh, aye. Are they more interesting than trilobites?”

“Indescribably so,” said the Doctor. His hand was still sitting comfortably atop Jamie’s, and it stayed there as Jamie sipped his cooling hot chocolate and tried not to think too hard about all the Doctor had told him. It seemed too big for his head, somehow. He still hadn’t worked out just how long five hundred million years was. But what he understood, he was beginning to like. 

He’d never quite warmed to the idea of a God who guided everything from His cloud, like a giant puppet master, and lately, with everything that had happened, everything that he’d seen, he’d found it harder and harder to believe. He pictured instead the Almighty winding the earth up like a music box and then standing back and letting it play its own tune, and found he liked that much better.

The Doctor let out a sigh as if he was going to say something, but instead he curled his thumb around Jamie’s hand, tucking it under his palm. Jamie felt a momentary flicker of anxiety which quickly faded when he glanced about and saw that no-one was looking – and so the Doctor’s hand stayed just where it was –

“Can you believe how _rude_ that woman was –” 

“Oh, drop it, Pol –”

– Till they heard a burst of familiar voices away down the café, and Jamie slipped his hand away, curling it around his hot chocolate. 

“Oh, _here_ they are!”

“So this is where you two ‘ave been, is it?” Ben stood by their table, unwinding his scarf. “We’ve been out in the cold and you two ‘ave been in here scoffing crumpets.” He unfastened his coat and nicked one from Jamie’s plate.

“We were starting to worry,” said Polly, plonking herself down in the third chair. “I suppose you know we’re on earth, then?”

Jamie nodded. “We found a trilobite,” he said.

“A what?”

Ben drew up a chair from a nearby table and sat himself down. “Miserable out there, innit?” He tossed his breathing mask down on the table-top. The waitress tinkled over and hurried through her Bluebird Inc. spiel. “Coffee, please.”

“The same, thanks.” Polly unwound her scarf and draped it over the back of her silvery chair.

“What’ve you two been doing, then?” said Ben.

“Oh,” said the Doctor carelessly, “I’ve been explaining the theory of evolution to Jamie.”

“Goodness,” said Polly.

“Bleedin’ ‘eck,” said Ben, “how’s that been coming along?”

“Better than I expected, actually,” said the Doctor.

Jamie smiled for a second, then scowled at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t take it personally,” said the Doctor. “A lot of people in Ben and Polly’s time struggle with this, you know.”

“Really?” said Jamie.

Ben had already lost interest. “We found a dead thing,” he said, “like a lobster from ‘ell – this long.” He slipped off his glove and stretched out his hands. “’orrible. Thanks, love,” he said to the waitress, shimmying back with his coffee. She fixed him with a stern look, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Polly waited till the waitress was gone, then pulled a face and said to Jamie, “what is she _wearing_? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I like it,” said Jamie. “It’s like instead of lookin’ in a mirror she’s bein’ a mirror. It’s nice.”

“Well, each to their own,” said Polly. On the other side of the table, the Doctor and Ben were having an animated discussion about what the dead ‘lobster’ might have been. “Oh, dear. I’m too tired for zoology.”

“Aye,” said Jamie, “I think I’ve had enough science for one day.” He pushed the crumpets down the table towards her.

“Thanks,” said Polly.

But she’d only got one bite down her when there was a _ding_ and a floating voice announced that they would shortly be departing for the next time period. “Ah,” said the Doctor. “We’d best get out before they lock the doors.”

“Could we not get a look at the next one?” said Ben.

Jamie frowned. “How would we get back to the TARDIS?”

“Exactly.” The Doctor stood up and patted Ben upon the shoulder. “Finish up, now, and I promise I shall take us somewhere warm next.” He ambled away towards the doors.

Ben rolled his eyes. “As if,” he said.


End file.
